> Lots of people bought those magazines only for the ads for programming products. Heck, I buy hot rod magazines because they have ads from vendors for parts I

> Lots of people bought those magazines only for the ads for programming products. Heck, I buy hot rod magazines because they have ads from vendors for parts I need. Same goes for guitar magazines. Of course interviews are good, but the ads are how most guitar players learned about new pedals and other things we need (or want to need). And ironically, computer magazine ads used to be the info source when it came to new hardware or software. The problem is that Internet ads come with the risk of infecting your system with shit nobody wants, 20 trackers completely unrelated to the product being advertised, and the fact that they much too often rely on shady tricks like wobbling or blinking or pretending to be something else just to annoy the fuck out of you enough that you'll click in the hopes of getting rid of it. That's why ads are such a problem. Not that we don't want ads. What we don't want are the risks and annoyances that the Internet has brought to them.